A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion New Members new member from Ontario, Canada

Hello fellow gardeners
My name is Karen aka Wilno, from the eastern end of the province of Ontario.
My partner and I are trying to get into growing as much of our own food as possible. It's not an easy prospect in our neck of the woods as the so called "soil" here is like beach sand. It needs a lot of fortification to grow anything other than weeds and scrub.
The past two years we've been dumping load after load of manure from a neighbour farmer. This year we hope to get better results.
We've had two days of heavy rain but today is chilly and sunny. We planted our first crop of hops along the high fence on the west side of the garden. This will be a permanent bed so we did a lot of work preparing it for the long term.
Hope you are all enjoying the lovely spring days with your hands in the dirt!

Hello Karen! Welcome to the forum!

I am on the coast of Maine so I understand something of what you describe. We do have Canadian forum members also; as well as members on more Southern coasts who experience similar conditions. So I hope you jump right in to the many conversations here!


Merme

Hi Merme
I've been to the Maine coast in May and found the weather to be virtually identical to what we experience here. What zone are you?

My location on the southern coast is zone 5b. Maine varies from zone 6 to Xone 3. Our proximity to the ocean tempers our climate, making it a bit less extreme than just a short distance inland which is zone 5a.

Also, we are at sea level here so that makes a difference for us as well. One expert mapping system declares that for every 1,000 ft of elevation, the temperature drops 5 degrees. So fortunately, we do not get as cold as folks do at higher elevations! br-r-r-r! -15F is quite cold enough, thanks!


Merme